Frédéric, a quick-to-be-enthused witness, and his comrade Hussonnet, whose nose is more delicate, attend the February events as though they were a spectacle that the one finds sublime and the other nauseating, and in which the People becomes flux, whirlwind, beast—undifferentiated, indefinite, elusive. The interposition of the fictional character, himself a prey to the vertigo of history, has the unexpected consequence of rendering unreal the very experiences he has a chance to live: “The wounded who sank to the ground, the dead lying at his feet, did not seem like persons really wounded or really dead” (p. 323). This is all the more the case because the inexhaustible discourses on the facts obfuscate the facts themselves. Flaubert lets his characters chatter, more or less banally, foolishly, sometimes unintelligibly: At the Club of Intelligence (what a misnomer!), a militant speaks Spanish, and the author does not translate; another one talks chivalric jargon. The collision of half-cooked ideas, deceitful statements, worn-out slogans, broken declamations, and obscure allusions results in the same magma in the political gatherings as in the banquets and orgies, and proves no more efficacious than the stereotypical love rhetoric.


While the characters’ existences give a sense of reiteration, circularity, and entropy, Flaubert’s mode of composition, in its meandering and occasionally enigmatic complexity, remains highly controlled. If in the epilogue Frédéric and Deslauriers “blamed bad luck” (p. 477), Flaubert calls the shots. If his descriptions are fragmented, he has an overarching aesthetic objective. If his protagonist’s perspective, which largely dominates, is not enlightening, he intends it to be so: For only idiots, whose received ideas regularly, although not always visibly, punctuate the text, believe in the certainty of meaning.

Frédéric never completes his artistic education; he becomes neither a writer nor a painter, hardly even an amateur. A similar degradation affects Arnoux’s endeavors. He goes from the thriving enterprise of “LArt industriel” (an oxymoron for Flaubert) to a crockery factory to the commerce of religious knickknacks; this degradation parallels his descent from his wife to the fashionable Rosanette to a nameless working girl. As for the painter Pellerin, he is an uninspired artist, and a pompous theoretician who merely echoes contemporary trends. Neoclassical during the Restoration, he turns eclectic under Louis-Philippe, and his portrait of Rosanette can be dubbed an old Italian piece. In 1848 he represents the Republic in the guise of Jesus Christ conducting a locomotive! Later he shouts, “Down with Realism,” and renders Rosanette’s dead baby as a grotesque still life, before finishing as a photographer. Like everything else, art is compromised by money, politics, and enormous egos, such as that of the ham comedian Delmar, who changes names and allegiances to hide his lack of substance. All these figures serve as foils to the author’s creative ideal. Transcending the stereotypes of the accursed Romantic genius as well as of the Realist laborer or expert, Flaubert would rather remain a secular monk persisting in the cult of style, prey to the pangs of perpetual doubt and self-derision.


Claudie Bernard is a professor of French at New York University. A specialist in nineteenth-century French literature and history of ideas, she is the author of two books, Le Chouan Romanesque, Balzac, Barbey dAurevilly, Hugo (1986) and Le Passé recomposé, le roman historique français au dix-neuvième siècle (1996), and of many articles. She also edited Les Chouans by Balzac, and two volumes of critical essays, Balzac paterfamilias (2001) and George Sand, Families and Communities (2005).

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

On the 15th of September, 1840,1 about six oclock in the morning, the Ville de Montereau, just about to sail, was sending forth great whirlwinds of smoke, in front of the Quai St. Bernard.2

People came rushing on board in breathless haste. Barrels, ropes, and baskets of linen lying around were in everybody’s way. The sailors would answer no enquiries. People jostled one another. Between the two paddlewheels was piled up a heap of baggage; and the uproar was drowned out by the loud hissing of the steam, which, escaping through iron plates, enveloped everything in a white cloud, while the bell at the prow rang incessantly.

At last, the vessel set out; and the two banks of the river, lined with warehouses, yards, and factories, opened out like two huge ribbons being unrolled.

A young man of eighteen, with long hair, holding a sketchbook under his arm, stood motionless near the helm. Through the haze he surveyed steeples, buildings of which he did not know the names; then, gave a parting glance, to the Île St. Louis, the Cite, Nôtre Dame; and soon, as Paris disappeared from his view, he heaved a deep sigh.

Frédéric Moreau, having just received his Bachelor’s degree, was returning home to Nogent-sur-Seine, where he would have to lead an idle existence for two months, before going back to begin his legal studies. His mother had sent him, with enough to cover his expenses, to Le Havre to see an uncle, in the hopes of his receiving an inheritance.3 He had returned from that place only yesterday; and to compensate for not having the opportunity of spending a little time in the capital he took the longest possible route to reach his own part of the country.

The hubbub had subsided. The passengers had all taken their places. Some of them stood warming themselves around the machinery, and the chimney spat forth with a slow, rhythmic rattle its plume of black smoke.